Quantic Dream

Quantic Dream continued to make me wonder how much it's angling for a job in movies last night with its Dark Sorcerer tech demo. This looked genuinely incredible at the beginning, before devolving into something I felt was a...

Apr 29 //
Allistair Pinsof
It's kind of uncomfortable. The Tribeca host who introduced Cage on the stage is now staring at the side of Cage’s face with dead eyes, like a cat high on feed who believes the kitchen wall has something very important to say about cat life. It makes me think of that wonderful Konami E3 press event. Meanwhile, the audience is staring at their answerphones, occasionally looking up to see if that guy ... yes that guy is still talking, well okay then ...
In the most long-winded way possible, Cage explains that his latest game Beyond: Two Souls is about a homeless girl on the run and a ghost buddy that helps her out. He says that but with 500 extra words about emotion, art, and thoughts on the future of videogames. I'm just kind of occupied by the press notes I was handed that proclaim him to be the creator of "story bending," an innovative technique that blurs the line between player and storyteller. Tribeca should have also included the rumor that Cage invented the internet.
The Cage may leave GDC, but the GDC may not leave the Cage.Who is David Cage? I thought I saw him pretty clear in one moment. Actress Ellen Page, who plays the female lead in Beyond: Two Souls, commends Cage's directing in a really forced, Hollywood-nice way, like you do on a panel in front of 200+ people. Cage just stares at the ground with a goofy smile. Like a shy fat kid complemented by his piano teacher, he's so overwhelmed he can't work up the words. These are the moments Cage lives for. Moments of validation. He's a starf*cker, too, but of a different type. He wants to be a fox skin that David Lynch wears around his neck and occasionally pets.
People seem to really dislike Cage around here. It's rare a Cage-related story is posted without the majority of comments ruthlessly tearing the guy apart, staff included. I can't help but laugh at some of these comments because there is truth to them. There is also truth to something Herman Hesse said, "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."
Reacting to low review scores like falling on a sword, gamers can be overly emotional -- just about every topic online is met with a heated reaction. There is often a desire for validation, wanting film critics and politicians to respect and love our medium as we do. You ARE David Cage (how's that for a twist ending?)
OK, I lied again.
I'm going to talk about David Cage for five more paragraphs. But know now, starf*ckers, this is not an article about David Cage. It is about the technology, creative talent, and studio that lets Cage be Cage as he approaches a new era of MAXIMUM CAGE with Beyond: Two Souls and his upcoming PlayStation 4 title, of which we only know contains old-man tech. Hollywood olds need love too.
Despite being flown across the country, shacked up in a hotel that looks like a futuristic, glass hen house for humans with more money and escorts than they can shake their dicks at (Dear fellow at room 1908, I enjoyed the discussion you and your two female friends had at 2 A.M. about who has the “most perfect tits.” Glad you settled it. Sincerely.) and invited to a game demo disguised as a film premiere, I didn’t actually talk to David Cage. Frankly, I don't think I'm missing much.
The man has said a lot. He’s a vocal and emotional speaker who wants games to progress. Whether you agree with him on what a game is or what “progress” really means is not as important as that he is such a visible figure that you can know what he stands for at all. This is a man, after all, who recreated himself virtually so he could introduce the player to his virtual game (see: 2005’s Indigo Prophecy).
He stands up for what he believes in, sometimes against gamers and sometimes against ratings boards. I think this is a good thing.
So, really, this is an article about everything not David Cage that goes on at Quantic Dream. But, you probably shouldn't take my word for things at this point. Similar to Cage, I too like to pause the dialog so I can seek validation for my interests and hobbies. I spent $40+ on macarons: please let me know if this is agreeable, dear reader.
Dat dank motion capture tech
I’ve been thinking lately, is it David Cage’s fault that Heavy Rain kind of sucks?
Do note I say “kind of,” as I enjoyed the game. The atmosphere, quick-time events that made interacting with controller into a game of Twister, and pace of the script was a bold and refreshing approach to adapting adventure games for current consoles. Mention TellTale's Walking Dead and I'll mention its sluggish pace, gameplay at odds with storytelling (slowly investigating every area of a train for a vague magical adventure game object while in dire straits = double ugh). But like most, I was dumb-founded by the performances and finale of Heavy Rain which is where the "sucks" part comes in after the "kind of."
A better question: Is it David Cage’s fault that Beyond: Two Souls is kind of awesome?
Like any Cage-related post on Destructoid, there will be comments below saying Cage isn’t even capable of making a movie. Hey poo-brains: Cage has never attempted to make a movie.
That is known. What is unknown to most is the bizarre, convoluted performance capture setup Quantic Dream used during Heavy Rain: first, voice is recorded in a sound booth and captured alongside facial animation. Then, body animation is captured while the audio recording is playing. Finally, these two different elements are spliced together. Strangest of all, each performance is done solo. These different performances are stacked together to make a series of awkward conversations on screen. As Cage observantly points out, “All subtlety is lost.”
Beyond: Two Souls may not be a next-gen title for consumers, but it may be called a next-gen title for those working on the production. The leap in capture equipment between Heavy Rain and Beyond is significant. Quantic Dream’s new tech lets Cage be an honest-to-God director instead of some sort of magician, miraculously making the most out of amateur French actors playing Americans with stilted dialog delivered through a complicated performance capture process.
Now, Cage gets to place up to seven actors in a room that act out scenes in a tiny 20 x 20 theater where performers must wear skin-tight black suits and white balls (90+ on face alone) all over. It’s not exactly a natural setting, but neither is sitting in a make-up trailer for two hours before shooting a film.
"At first it was [distracting], you can't physically touch your face if you are crying you have to break everything up," Ellen Page said at a panel following the Beyond: Two Souls screening. "I got used to it. When you shoot a movie you need to do make-up and hair every morning; this was nice because you just put on your suit and you're done. That was actually faded away pretty quickly, but of course on the first day it's unusual."
This new capture setup lets Cage, at long last, be an actual director. Free of two-part recordings and isolated performances, Cage can now direct the flow of conversation, action, and (HOLY FUCKING SHIT SNACKS) emotion. The results are good. The performances are natural and, at times, powerful, even when the words are not.
"From a tech standpoint, we now have the ability to capture faithfully their performance and present it in real-time 3D," Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumière told me in an interview (ostensibly, the 12 minutes that I flew out to New York for -- well, that and the macaroons at Bouchon Bakery which are delicious, especially the lemon). "That wasn’t the case before. To a certain extent, why ask these terribly talented people to bring their craft to videogames if we can’t do anything? Today we can."
Can? Sure. How about should?
On why Ellen Page will probably never do a game again (it's hard work!)
Like their writer, the characters of Beyond: Two Souls are direct, vocal about their feelings, and intensely emotional. Despite a lack of subtlety in writing, Ellen Page and her surrounding cast make it work.
Color me surprised. When Heavy Rain debuted in 2010, the term "Uncanny Valley" graced many an editorial. The facial models of Heavy Rain were advanced for the time, but the crude emotional reactions created an unnerving effect -- by looking too human, these characters were suddenly freakishly non-human. Going into Beyond: Two Souls, I expected the effect to be tenfold since these are faces I know very well as a lover of film. Even Rockstar, a developer that played a key role in progressing videogame performances to where they are now, has turned against celebrity actors since the PlayStation 2 days.
"When you know the actors, it’s a little more challenging for us, the developer. I think it's still not perfect. but the more tech evolves, the more we are going to have means for faithfully representing the actors," Fondaumière said, "but only now have we reached a point -- I hope you seen it tonight -- we are not totally through the uncanny valley but we are close to it. We are through it 99-percent of the time. It’s a challenge."
It may read like hyperbole, but I agree. When watching the in-game performances side-by-side with the studio performances, it becomes clear how uncanny valley is a thing of the past. Part of this has to do with stylization, changing Page and Willem Dafoe's (getting that PS4 old man wrinkle tech may be the missing 1% that Fondaumière suggests) faces just enough so that they aren't an exact representation of them.
Rockstar used celebrity actors to bring character depth to its rough PS2 polygonal models, leaning on immediately recognizable voices and personalities. Samuel L. Jackson plays Samuel L. Jackson, even if the script says different. In contrast, Quantic Dream is bringing character depth to celebrity actors, in hopes of weaving a more believable narrative that keeps the illusion of high stakes and consequence alive throughout the adventure.
With no camera, 360 capture, no lighting, and no marks on the floor, Beyond's cast is able to enter a natural stage second only to theater.
"It takes you back to the purest form of acting. It was really wild. He guided us and we had a lot of fun together," actor Eric Winter said at the panel.
The experience is still a grueling one, Page said, due to shooting 30+ pages a day (compared to 3-to-5 on the set of upcoming indie thriller The East), memorizing a 2,000-page script, and delivering separate reactions that play on different emotions within the same recording session.
These are issues specific to games writing that have nothing to do with technology. These challenges will be here to stay. It will be interesting to see what performers are capable of rising to the tremendous task. Ellen Page may be one of the first.
Meet David Cage's dad
Before meeting Fondaumière, I didn't know what a co-CEO is. I'm still not entirely sure.
A nice way of putting it is that he runs the business while Cage runs the creative process. Another way of putting it is that he's Cage's dad. He's the one that sets Cage up on his playdates with Hollywood talent, finds the funding to let Cage be Cage, and pushes for better, new technology. Without him, Cage would still be around but he wouldn't be nearly as well known.
Also, dude's been knighted! KNIGHTED!!!
I had one question I was very anxious to ask Fondaumière: David Cage is a very visible game designer who is vocal about his feelings on design, people either hate him or love him -- are you ever concerned with how this affects business?
Fondaumière's response in full:
We talk a lot about it. He and I. It’s always difficult. On one hand, we both want to move the medium forward. I, on my side, step forward and try to move things. I had a talk last week about "Are games culture?" We both don’t want to be here just to make money. We make it for a living, but we love the medium and want to push it forward. But of course there is always a risk; by talking out loud, people start pointing fingers at you and disagreeing with you. Maybe that affects the rest of the business … you have to be careful sometimes. David has even said, 'I don’t want to speak out anymore,' but I keep pushing him. He says important things and he should continue to say them; sometimes it hurts; sometimes we may lose sales because of it, but in the long run, we are pushing certain discussions forward or at least contribute to it. I think it’s important.
Fondaumière shied away from directly discussing it, but it appears that he tries to influence development in subtle ways. Lately, he has been bringing on Hollywood talent to work at Quantic Dream, guiding Cage in developing his stories. You can read this one of two ways: Cage only can write so many 2,000-page scripts on his own or Fondaumière read the reviews of Heavy Rain. It may just be a mix of both.
"David has so many ideas that Quantic Dream doesn’t have enough resources to put all of these ideas into games," Fondaumière said. "Our job is to turn these ideas into projects. So we are trying to attract talent: script writers, directors, photographers. That’s currently what we are working on. It’s challenging but a very interesting process."
Cage is now joined by two other writers in script writing Quantic Dream's PS4 game in development. The results are "very positive" Fondaumière said, but are they positive enough to sustain Quantic Dream?
No other developer puts such a focus on narrative storytelling while pursuing expensive talent and production, which makes me wonder if Quantic Dream can survive the FPS-hungry market climate. Does Beyond: Two Souls have to sell more than Heavy Rain, in order for Quantic Dream to continue, I asked.
"If it’d sale the same, yes. It’d be sustainable business. The production budget of Beyond is comparable but a little higher than Heavy Rain," Fondaumière said.
Fondaumière said the project will be a success if it sells 2.5 million units, but he hopes it well sell more.
MAXIMUM CAGE
Evolving capture technology, Hollywood talent, an amiable business partner. These are the things that let David Cage be David Cage.
But, there is one other thing that I haven't mentioned yet: YOU, the people who buy his games, discuss his GDC talks, and listen to what he says. It's validation Cage wants and it's validation you give, even by hating him. But why not validate him and his arguments, when no one else is getting on stage? No one else is going to Tribeca or insisting on spending a chunk of its production budget on Hollywood talent.
Cage is a contradiction of sorts. He's a pioneer but not a visionary. A director but not one always concerned with game design. He is not gaming's David Lynch, because gaming's David Lynch hasn't arrived yet. David Cage has to come first, along with all the things that prop him up.There is no red button we can slam that will prevent David Cage from being David Cage. So, let's hope MAXIMUM CAGE is a good thing.

Ok, I liedThe first twelve paragraphs are about David Cage. AKA David De Gruttola. AKA Composer-turned-game designer. AKA Founder of French developer Quantic Dream, responsible for excellent implementation of David Bowie (see: Omikron)...

It's not normal for a man to write a 2,000 page script or direct a 10+ hour film, so I can't blame David Cage if all of Beyond: Two Souls isn't golden. Realizing how this strains developer Quantic Dream's game director, co-CE...

When I asked Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumière if its upcoming, untitled PlayStation 4 game would be based on Beyond: Two Souls' engine, I got a response I wasn't expecting. The developer began development ...

Apr 28 //
Allistair Pinsof[embed]252645:48402:0[/embed]
If you do watch, you'll see just how far Cage has come as a director, presenting scenes from interesting angles and getting great performances out of his cast. You also may see some questionable writing choices. Keep your eyes pealed for the cleanest birth ever and a man reacting to Jodie landing from a three story jump by saying "I don't know how you did that, but it was incredible!"
It certainly is emotional.

Let's talk about emotions and stuff
Say what you want about David Cage, but I dare you to watch the above trailer and not be impressed. I feel you are going to prove me wrong, but join me, however briefly, with enthusiasm for Beyond: Two Soul's immense trailer...

David Cage has said in the past that he writes characters with actors in mind for roles. With better tech and a bigger budget, Cage finally got the cast he wanted with Beyond: Two Souls which stars Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe...

Just because I'm in New York this weekend covering Beyond: Two Soul's presence at the Tribeca Film Festival, doesn't mean you have to. Have to be in New York that is, since the hour-long clip and trailer will be live streamed...

As you may have heard, Beyond: Two Souls is an official selection for the Tribeca Film Festival. Sony has sent along a fake bootleg to go along with that massive fake script.
After watching a bit of some fake (but well...

I could see the FedEx delivery man hobbling down the street. I knew he was coming for me, but he was taking awhile as he was carrying a small box that looked like it was giving him some trouble. I met him halfway and he gave ...

Ellen Page. Polygons. Emotions. Mature. Beyond.
On a related note, David Cage and Ms. Page will be screening Beyond: Two Souls at the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday, April 27. Because it's a movie, I guess.
BEYOND: Two Souls Box Art Revealed [PlayStation Blog]

I had the pleasure of visiting Quantic Dream's studio last month (see above picture), and it was there that I saw something interesting while being shown upcoming game Beyond: Two Souls. Unfortunately, that's about all I...

Beyond: Two Souls had to fight to stop its promo art being reduced to a character holding a gun like 90% of the rest of videogame advertising, Quantic Dream recently revealed. Had marketers had their way, Ellen Page would be ...

Think David Cage's films are just movies with button prompts? I don't, but upcoming PS3 game Beyond: Two Souls is at least film-y enough to appear at the Tribeca Film Festival. The game will be an Official Selection -- a firs...

At a preview event earlier this week, Quantic Dream boss David Cage revealed that their upcoming PS3 game, Beyond: Two Souls, would not use QuickTime Events (QTEs). In an effort to create a more discreet and fluid UI, they've...

Mar 21 //
Dale North
Beyond: Two Souls (PS3)Developer: Quantic DreamPublisher: SCEARelease: October 2013
Starting out, Jodie looked to be returning to a scientific research center just as firefighters and ambulances were wheeling out injured people from the building. It looked as if she was warned not to enter, but she does anyway, moving past debris, injured bodies, and burning walls to go deeper into the building.
Jodie can be moved with the left analog stick, with the navigation of her world being fully contextual. Simply move her to where you need and she'll step over thresholds, climb over obstacles, and more, each with specific animations. I did this to step over debris, through broken windows, and deeper into dangerous looking territory.
The world interaction system is completely new, using the right stick to input moves that make sense in given situations. Unlike Heavy Rain, there are no prompts for action with this system. Instead, a simple white dot will show areas of potential interaction. Moving the right stick at this dot in a way that makes sense for a given action, like pushing up to stand, or down to crouch, executes that action. Movements are always based on where Jodie is and what she's able to do in that location. Some situations involve button-press prompts, while others use the SIXAXIS movement sensors to have players moving the controller around.
The first obstacle of the demo that we encountered had Jodie stopped at an elevator door that would not open. She requested that Aiden move ahead to investigate, which had me moving the entity down the elevator shaft to find that the elevator door would not close due to an obstruction. A simple press of the triangle button toggles control between Jodie and Aiden at any time.
Being an invisible entity, Aiden can fly around anywhere. Controlling it in a first-person view, I was able to fly through walls and other matter, straight down into the jammed elevator. Aiden can interact with objects in the world through use of the analog sticks and the R1 button, enabling it to push, throw, and blast objects. I used this ability to push the obstruction away from the door, letting the elevator close to be called up to Jodie.
The demo featured other situations where I had to use Aiden to do things move through a door to unlock it, or move through a fire to push a fire extinguisher toward Jodie to help her quell flames. Some situations presented the option to use either Jodie or Aiden to proceed. In one room, glass doors prevented Jodie from progressing. The player could either use Aiden's blast ability to bust the glass, or have Jodie pick up a chair to slam it through the glass.
One of the most interesting team abilities for the duo has Aiden channeling some of another human's aura toward Jodie. This enables Jodie to have a short vision, which, in this case, gave her a fuzzy glimpse of injured or dead people's last moments. In two different situations in this demo, these visions showed that these humans were attacked by some force. The last one seen showed what looked to be semi-transparent tentacles coming out of the wall to thrash some victim around. My guess is that this entity had something to do with the disaster at this research center, and that Jodie went in to deal with it.
Just as things got interesting, a Quantic Dream staffer cut me off from proceeding.
From what we saw in the hour-long presentation and from this hands-on session, it seems that moving through Beyond: Two Souls involves a lot of problem-solving collaboration between Aiden and Jodie. With the simple challenges presented here, it was kind of satisfying to switch between two totally different control types to figure out how to progress. I'd imagine that more complex problem solving will be required as the game progresses.
While Jodie moves exactly as you'd expect with this simple interaction system, the first-person control of Aiden takes a little getting used to. Flying around and whipping through walls and doors is fun and freeing, but with that much freedom it's also a bit disorienting. The camera control feels sufficiently like moving a ghost around, but with no limitations other than distance from Jodie, you can easily end up lost between walls or other structures. Add in Aiden's negative color view and disorientation comes even easier.
While I would have preferred playing what we were shown in the hands-off presentation, this demo was more than enough to show off how Beyond will use Aiden and Jodie's unique control schemes together. Other aspects of Jodie's control, like an action system for combat, and vehicle control, were teased during this visit, but it looks like we'll have to wait to try these out.

Control system detailedWhile a sizable portion of Beyond: Two Souls was shown to press at a event at Quantic Dream this week, unfortunately, it was a hands-off situation. But the studio didn't want to leave us completely empty handed, so they prepa...

Mar 21 //
Dale North
Beyond: Two Souls (PS3)Developer: Quantic DreamPublisher: SCEARelease: October 2013
In this time, Jodie is an adult, a fugitive on the run. She has no family or friends, and her need to escape has left her alone, homeless, on the streets of a snowy city in the middle of winter. By this point she has moved fully beyond the down-on-her-luck stage, passing out from cold and exhaustion in the snow. She would have been left for dead if it wasn't for her invisible protector, Aiden, calling attention to her in the street so that a fellow homeless person could tend to her.
When she finally comes to, Jodie struggles with her self worth, to the point that she feels like going on isn't worth the trouble. Luckily, the homeless people that took her in cared enough to give her some purpose, which gradually puts her on the road to recovery. She begins to care about these people enough that she eventually opens up to them, sharing some of the secrets of her gift. This same gift, her tie to the invisible entity she named Aiden, lets her repay the saving favor in many ways. It's too bad that her past ends up catching up with her in the end.
Watching Jodie get to know these people played out exactly as it would in a movie, which made it very easy to be drawn into the story. There's a lot going on under the hood to make this possible. First, the seamless and nearly invisible system of Beyond: Two Souls had everything from character movement to item interaction looking like a cinematic event. It was easy to forget that this was not a string of cutscenes with button prompts, and that a player was controlling the entire session, making every choice and movement. Save for a couple of instances of graphical glitches (the demo was only in alpha state) or where another animation pass might be needed, watching someone else play was like watching a film.
While the game never breaks form in looking like a movie, it does lean slightly more towards the game side of things during action combat scenes. Thankfully, Quantic Dream ditched QTEs in favor of a nearly invisible, prompt-less system where the game slows motion down during combat and awaits simple input from the right analog stick. Players will have to watch the action for context clues to know how to move the stick. We saw a really impressive fight scene where Jodie takes on multiple attackers in the street, where she kicked, punched, dodged, and countered through this input system. Despite the use of "bullet time," the scene managed to be fast-paced and exciting.
Quantic Dream has the PS3 pulling off some graphical sorcery that goes a very long way toward making Beyond look like a feature film. Their engine does some absolutely stunning stuff with depth of field and bokeh, giving every scene the look of a filmic camera shot. Watching snow fall onto already deep snow drifts in the evening, as street lights flickered in the distance, made me wonder how the PS3 was able to display such quality. Quantic Dream told us that some of their early work on renderers for the PS4 showed them that they could apply some new techniques to their PS3 engine. What they've been able to pull over and implement is unlike anything seen in any current generation video game. Dazzling stuff.
The performance capture equipment and techniques used during 12 months of shooting real actors really paid off. Their impeccably captured performances seal the deal when it comes to working toward a convincing cinematic experience.
Outside of some of the walking/turning animations, every movement is so realistic that the line between game and film is so blurred that you'll forget to think about it. It's also good that the photorealistic faces of the characters never dip into Uncanny Valley. Forget stretchy texture maps with eye holes for faces -- these look like real, living, breathing people, with reactive eyes that have depth and soul.
I could go on about how fantastic Beyond looks, but it's not really about the visuals. All of this tech and mo-cap was to be used to further the storytelling power for the game, and from what I saw, telling an engrossing story was mission number one. The session was bookended by two rather critical story moments, both of which had my mind wandering, but even without knowing where the story started or ended up, all the stuff in the middle had me totally drawn in, itching to know what happens next.
Just about every scene moved me in some way -- harrowing, uplifting, reflective, or tense moments that came together to make for a supremely entertaining hour of watching. There was one particularly beautiful moment that I keep thinking about, even some days later. I can only imagine how these sensations would have been heightened if I were able to actually play it.
If you played Heavy Rain, you'll know that Quantic Dream was already well on their way toward their ideal cinematic game experience. It's just that the game was rough around the edges in so many ways that you could never fully be drawn in as intended. Too many off moments had it missing the mark.
From everything I've seen of Beyond, it looks like they've figured the rest out since then. All of their work, from the cast, performance capture, graphics engine, and new systems, makes it seem like everything has finally come together. Their desire to share an interactive emotional journey comes through cleanly, with no hindrances. Perhaps all of that ambition has paid off, as it seems they've been able to take a very large step from their last game. Beyond: Two Souls looks to be something special. I can't wait to see more.

Beyond goes beyondAfter watching about an hour of live gameplay of Beyond: Two Souls, I felt like I witnessed a string of truly meaningful moments in the life of a gifted yet misunderstood person. In this small glimpse into what was probably j...

It seems totally fitting that this week should see the release of Omikron: The Nomad Soul on GOG.com, the same week as David Bowie releases his first album in a decade. The Thin White Duke wrote the soundtrack and even made a...

This week, Father of Dreams and visionary game director David Cage hosts the show and tells us all about emotion. Emotion. Emotion.
What is it like to feel? What can videogames learn from film? How well does David know Ellen Page? Watch this soul-scorching video and prepare to be impressed. Emotion.

As we do every Friday (except for sometimes) we did a live Destructoid Show.
CD Projekt Red announced some stuff about The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, and then dropped some new screens. Some stuff is being released in May...

David Cage has taken to the stage tonight to suggest that emotion in games begins and ends with graphics, proving his point with a really ugly old man head. Who needs a good script when you have the sad eyes of a near-dead wa...

During David Cage's presentation at D.I.C.E. Summit 2013 this morning, in a talk on his vision for the game industry, he addressed last year's E3's showing of violent, shocking content. The Quantic Dream boss made it clear th...

Superannuation has been on a roll lately with spotting curious domain registrations. As posted on Kotaku, it's been discovered that Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream registered singularityps4.com back in November of last yea...

While yesterday's Beyond: Two Souls panel at San Diego Comic Con focused mainly on actress Ellen Page’s involvement as protagonist Jodie Holmes, a few gameplay and development details did slip out during the session. Di...

Self-proclaimed videogame auteur David Cage has urged the videogame industry to innovate of face certain death.
"... This industry will die if it doesn't try more to be innovative and to come up with new ideas and to talk a b...

According to the latest gossip, beloved actor Willem Dafoe is set to co-star in David Cage's next tribute to Hollywood, Beyond: Two Souls. Now sit back and imagine that man's face rendered with Quantic Dream's uncanny valley ...

Jun 07 //
Allistair PinsofBeyond isn’t a brave step forward for Quantic Dream. It’s more of a meditative glimpse in all directions; it's the product of a studio reflecting on what they did right, what they did wrong, and what they can do better. How about actors who don’t sound like down-syndrome French? How about a story that has momentum, focus, and variety? How about a game that you control more than you watch?
The 30-minute demo of Beyond, showed behind closed doors, presented its teenage female protagonist Jodie Holmes in an intense couple of scenes, as she literally runs from the law. At the start of the demo, Jodie is asleep on a moving train. Instead of controlling Jodie, you control her spirit friend Aiden. As Aiden, you can float around the train, travel through windows, and interact with items in close proximity. In the demo, Aiden isn’t given a voice or personality. Who he is, is defined completely by the player. I imagine Aiden, for most players, will be a nuisance that maliciously spills hot coffee on people and steals their newspapers from them.
Regardless of what you don’t do in the game, there are certain things you must do. Cage loves to say the game is nonlinear but he is only half-right. Beyond seems as linear as Heavy Rain in play, it’s just that there are many branching linear paths you can go down. Most of the time you’ll have direct control over Aiden or Jodie, but in action scenarios you’ll be presented quick-time-event sequences identical to those found in Heavy Rain. Despite looking and playing better, there is an element of genuine surprise missing from Beyond. Though, Cage hints that this demo was only a small, action-focused piece of Beyond’s story that follows Jodie through 15 years of her life. Though the demo presented a fugitive scenario, Cage said it's only a footnote in the game's decade-spanning story.
Beyond is filled with details that display the passion and artistry pumping through Quantic Dream. Actor performances are top notch, with voice and motion capturing done at the same time (like Uncharted 3; unlike the awkward animation/acting of Heavy Rain). Jodie has numerous animation loops that give variety to her walking and ideal states. Animals react to Aiden’s presence, even though others are unaware. Beyond is a unique experiment in interactive storytelling. Between a script that Cage slaved over for a year and some slight improvements to elements in past Quantic Dream games, Beyond will likely be every bit as unique and divisive as Heavy Rain.
Although I find many of Beyond’s ideas intriguing, I worry about their execution. Being able to possess a cop is neat, but isn’t the novelty kind of faded if all you can do is press L3 to trigger an animation of shooting other cops? Sometimes you can walk around and have more choice, but that seemed to be the exception rather than the rule in this E3 demo. Even when there is some player agency left intact, it doesn’t seem very fun.
The demo came to a close with Aiden protecting Jodie, as she hides in a small town invaded by heavily armed police. You can blow up the car on the right, or the car on the left. You also need to blow up the car in the middle if you want to continue the story. There are other options, but it all seemed to boil down to "blow this up, instead of that; watch animation, and repeat." That seems to be Beyond at its most open. Like Heavy Rain, there is a trade-off taking place: The player isn’t given much freedom in action, but the action is wonderfully orchestrated when it does happen.
I don’t think Beyond will change anyone’s mind on David Cage and the type of games he makes. At the end of the demo, Cage had a very apologetic tone, as if to say, “I really want to show you the weirder, narrative-focused stuff, but this is E3 so I needed to show you a big action set-piece.” Cage hinted that the game may play with player death, chronological storytelling, and aging in innovative ways. Though I can’t get stoked about hammering the trigger buttons in a QTE sequence, I’m excited to explore the narrative tapestry that connects the Beyond’s more heated moments.

Whether you loved it or hated it, you must admit that Heavy Rain could have been better. Even its creator David Cage admits it fell short of his ambitions. He’d also be the first to tell you that its follow-up, Beyond: Two Souls, is better, and he wouldn’t be wrong.

As many of you correctly guessed, Ellen Page will be the lead actress in David Cage's next game, Beyond: Two Souls. Cage was particularly excited to announce this during Sony's press conference, putting emphasis on Page'...